


Epistolary

by draculard



Category: Maynard's House - Herman Raucher
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Ficlet, Letters, M/M, could be read as slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 09:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20080138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Austin finds a stack of letters in Maynard's bedroom, tied together with twine.





	Epistolary

He finds a stack of letters in Maynard’s bedroom, tied together with twine. The envelope corners have been chewed by squirrels, but the letters are intact, written on sheets of cheap blue typewriting paper.

Who could be writing to Maynard? No friends, no family, leave-my-house-to-a-mildly-friendly-subordinate Maynard? The slanting writing on the letters is familiar. Austin reads them in front of a water-stained hanging mirror in his long-johns, and he’s halfway through the sentence, “all our catmint has been rooted out the garden,” when his eyes trail down to the signature and he realizes:

Maynard wrote these letters to himself.

He kisses the signature. Who’s lonelier, he wonders — the dead soldier who wrote himself letters he could read alone in the woods of Maine, with no one else to talk to? Or the discharged vet who kisses them?

The paper’s cold against his lips. _Your dear friend, Maynard_ — that’s what the signature says. Even to himself, calm, stoic Maynard never wrote the word “love.”


End file.
